


Like The Tides You Turn

by missgoalie75



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Merman Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 14:05:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missgoalie75/pseuds/missgoalie75
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Lydia meets Stiles after he saves her twice | Mermaid!AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like The Tides You Turn

**Author's Note:**

> Full list of characters/pairings: Lydia, Stiles, Sheriff Stilinski, Danny, Jackson, Scott (sort of); Lydia/Stiles, Lydia/Jackson
> 
> Spoilers/Warnings: none; AU, one sex scene (sort of)
> 
> Disclaimer: Title is from "Trace of You" by Peter Bradley Adams
> 
> This is for Ashley - happy birthday and I hope this doesn't suck too much.

Lydia almost drowns when she's nine years old and swimming on the beach with her friends, even though Greenberg's older brother was halfheartedly supervising them and told them not to go deeper than their knees. The ocean is rough and the rip tides are stronger than usual. All the lifeguards have yellow flags blowing in the wind, signaling caution.

But this town lives and breathes water. She's the best swimmer in her class along with Jackson, who jeers and taunts until everyone is swimming, overwhelmed by the pull and push of the tides.

Lydia is sucked into a rip tide and doesn't go under in time when a large wave crashes over her as she gasps for air. She's thrown around and feels a sense of claustrophobia she thinks she'll always be a little terrified of, years from now. Water goes up her nose and she's choking on salt water, too desperate for air to think properly and – 

Everyone says adrenaline must've kicked in at the last moment, giving her the strength to get to the surface before the lifeguard could reach her. She says she only remembers the first impact of the wave and the cute lifeguard carrying her out of the water.

She doesn't say that while underwater, she felt a warm press of lips against hers and somehow, against all logic and understanding (and she was very logical and understanding at nine years old), she could _breathe._

**

Later that night, she fills up the sink with water, sticks her head in it, and inhales, just to see, but she rips her head out and coughs for the next five minutes.

**

Her parents get a divorce within the year and it's messy and it lasts for what seems to be forever. They fight over her head, ignoring her to attack each other and she likes slipping away to the beach, the waves crashing against the shore drowning out the awful things her parents say.

And when she dives into the water and swims out as far as the buoy her dad put out as a marker, she doesn't feel so alone.

**

She's thirteen and Allison doesn't warn her in time and a wave falls on top of her. This time, she keeps her calm and brings herself into a ball, coming up for air when she stops spinning.

When she breaks the surface, she jumps as something brushes against her skin.

"It's just seaweed or a fish," Lydia says when Allison makes a concerned noise.

Even so, she gets out of the water and spends the rest of the day sunbathing, unnerved.

**

Jackson grows up to swim for their high school, effectively making him a god in their small town. He tries to hide the smell of the chlorine that's perpetually stuck to his skin and his hair, but he sweats it, the smell sometimes ignorable and sometimes unbearable while they're fucking on his bed at three in the morning.

He asks her one night why she never stuck with swimming – she could've been one of the best on the girls' team (he never did like it when she upstaged him with anything). 

"Well…do you like how soft my hair is?" she asks, bringing his hand to run through her strawberry blonde hair, losing its redness in the spring sun.

He's dazed as he nods and she can feel his growing erection on the inside of her thigh.

"Do you like how smooth my skin is?" she continues, husky as she moves his hand down to her breast and he squeezes greedily. "This is because I stay _far away_ from chlorine," she finishes before kissing him.

While it's all true – she works to keep her skin this flawless and she never recovered from the last time she swam in a pool; her hair turned ever so slightly green for weeks – she prefers the ocean, a home outside of her own four walls and roof.

**

Lydia almost drowns again when she's seventeen while she, Jackson, Danny, and his boyfriend Ethan are sailing on Jackson's boat. They're thrown off the boat by a five-foot wave and she cracks her head against the hull of the boat as it turtles.

She wakes up with a sharp headache, dehydrated, bruised, and on a flat rock close to the shore. She's in so much pain that she thinks the boy she sees catching his breath in front of her is a hallucination. But the longer she stares, her vision becomes less fuzzy – she can see the water droplets in his hair and the subtle curve of muscle in his arms and the brightness in his brown eyes when he whips his head up to look at her.

She can't talk – her mouth is too dry and she's stuck for a word to say – but he more than makes up for it the second he opens his mouth:

"Uh, are you okay? I mean obviously you're not, you hit your head pretty badly against the boat, but it doesn't seem like you have any broken bones or lacerations anywhere, so I guess that means you're okay from a certain perspective. So, are you? Okay, that is."

"Oh my God, you're so loud," she manages to croak, bringing a hand to her pounding head, closing her eyes.

"…I'll take that as a yes, great. Awesome."

When he doesn't say anything in response after a few seconds, she opens her eyes to find him just staring at her, almost like he's drinking her in. She starts to blush in response (she feels like a marvel, admired).

"Where did you come from? How did you save me?" she asks, sounding more like a demand. 

He blinks, panic stricken for a second before smiling nervously. "I was swimming around the area?"

She narrows her eyes and looks past him, quickly figuring out how far she is from where the accident happened.

"How did you swim me half a mile away? You're definitely not strong enough for that, especially in these waters."

"I'm stronger than I look," he counters, eyes steely and the water in his eyelashes distracts her.

She swallows and tries to run a hand through her salt-caked hair. She hates how illogical this is – having a conversation with a random boy who could not have possibly been swimming so far out, who couldn't have carried her so far in such a short amount of time.

"Who are you?" she asks, softer.

He clenches his jaw and drops his gaze for a moment, using his hands to push himself up so he's closer to her eye level. "You don't know?"

She wants to lean back, put some distance between them, but she's hypnotized by the way he bites his bottom lip for a fleeting second, eyes radiant in the reflecting sun. She closes her eyes and she can feel his exhale on her lips and she _remembers._ An arm around her waist, grounding her, mouth against hers, giving her air, the way she sometimes would feel like someone is _watching_ her in the ocean throughout the years and it drove her crazy, she _felt_ crazy because _it's not possible –_

She doesn't realize she's pressed her forehead against his until she feels a tentative hand cup the back of her neck, his thumb gently running over her jawline.

" _Lydia_ ," he whispers and it sounds desperate, full of longing and her breath hitches in her throat.

He's so close she can feel the heat of his skin sinking into her own and for a moment, she opens her eyes, enough to see that his torso is followed by greenish-blue _fish scales._

She gasps and pulls back, eyes wide open and he sinks into the water, deceptively human, and there's a mixture of horror and sadness on his face before he disappears underwater.

 _Wait_ is on the tip of her tongue, but she can hear her name being called and she passes out from shock and the massive pain in her head.

**

She's diagnosed as having a concussion and she's not allowed to watch TV, read, or do anything mentally tiring.

So she researches in small increments, stopping when the pain becomes too much and _mermaid_ doesn't seem like a real word anymore.

**

While recovering from her concussion, she doesn't have dreams, except one night she has a nightmare about a sea creature and it's not exactly fair since the mermaid – mer _man_ – doesn't have the face for it. If he were human, he'd probably be a dork in school and he would never cross her radar.

**

Jackson wants to celebrate her recovery two weeks later by having sex. She loves sex, she really does, but she's distracted and lost in her head for most of it.

"You okay?" Jackson asks, out of breath after he comes. "Does your head hurt?"

"A little," she lies, bringing a hand to his face. "I'm fine."

He smiles at her. "We can go to Splash? I know how much you love the seafood salad there."

She can't hold back the queasiness she feels. His face falls, mildly terrified, as if she'll vomit on him.

"Or…whatever you want? My treat, obviously."

"How about _pizza_ ," she suggests, nodding her head enthusiastically. No fish on that.

Never mind that she hasn't had pizza since she was thirteen.

**

That night, she walks out her back door, straight through her yard and onto the beach, shivering at the cold sand under her feet.

The moon is full and high and she stops walking once the ocean washes over her feet. She shudders again at the chill and takes a deep breath, steeling herself. She whips off her dress and adjusts her bikini before going into the water.

She gasps at the cold temperature, but keeps swimming until she reaches the rock closest to the shore that she can sit on, feeling ridiculous. What are the odds of… _him_ …being here? The ocean is vast, 63,780,000 square feet, and –

She nearly screams when his head pops out of the water, a good few feet away.

They stare at each other for a good minute. She's trying to convince herself that she's not, in fact, insane, and he seems to be debating on coming closer or swimming away.

"I've done research," she says loudly over the water.

"And?" he asks, hesitant, but not looking away from her.

"Well, it's a lot of nonsense, for one," she starts, annoyed, "I had to read a lot of lore and fairytales, which I never liked since they had no basis in reality."

"'Had' being the key term, I guess."

She shoots him a glare, but he's smiling now.

"Do you go by a name?" she asks.

She expects some name that's otherworldly, but instead he responds with, "Stiles."

She stares at him. "What?"

"Stiles…that's my name. Well, my _nickname_ , I suppose. My parents didn't _name_ me Stiles, that would be strange, but –"

"Parents? So there are other mer…people?"

Stiles' smile drops. "Not that I know of, no."

She rubs her arms to get warm and it's not so much because of the breeze.

"So! Uh, does this mean you're not going to tell anyone that there's an actual merman living around Beacon Hills because that would be swell – I really don't fancy the idea of being experimented on and whatnot," Stiles says, clearly wanting to change the conversation, but desperate for an honest answer.

She runs her teeth over her bottom lip. "I suppose you saved my life twice, so I owe you twice. I won't say anything."

He grins, large and bright and she can't help but smile back.

**

She goes out at night whenever she can and talks with him. There's a large part of her that feels so incredibly _sad_ for him, how he's the only mer-person he knows, that his only friends are fish and other sea creatures, which he can apparently talk to.

"They don't last very long, though, they have very short attention spans. I'm pretty sure it helped progress my development of ADHD, but," he shakes his head and changes the topic, saying how he hasn't left the Californian coast, the vastness of the Pacific Ocean terrifying to him.

"You converse with killer whales – one of which you've named _Scott_ because you're _close_ – and yet you're afraid of venturing out past the coast?"

Stiles is the weirdest person – creature? Being? – she's ever known and yet she's still here.

He shrugs sheepishly. "The ocean's a scary place, especially the Pacific."

**

She wants to ask about that day when she was nine, how she could breathe, but she stops herself every time.

**

Lydia has always kept things to herself – her dreams about her parents making up and getting back together, the extent of how smart she really is – but this certainly pushes it enough for her mom to be concerned, for Jackson to take notice.

"I'm busy with looking at schools," she tells Jackson when she blows him off the second time this week.

He mentions something about going to a California university and she promptly doesn’t tell him about the Ivy League schools bookmarked on her browser.

Her mom, however, is harder to convince and she forces her to help her clean out the attic as a means of bonding.

"Aw, look at you and Jackson. I still think it's adorable that you were in the same preschool class," her mom says, smiling as she hands Lydia a picture.

She can spot herself easily – the only kid in the class with red hair – and Jackson is at the end of her row, smiling easily. She hasn't seen him smile like that nearly enough.

She's about to put the picture in the box of photos they're keeping when she realizes there's a second photo stuck underneath. She carefully peals the two photos away from each other, placing the preschool photo in the box and staring at the second photo, surprised to see it's another preschool photo, but the kids look smaller.

She finds herself easily enough again and she's three – she remembers that blue dress because there's a picture of just her in it somewhere in the box of photos – but what causes her to stop breathing is the boy sitting next to her, whose hand is gripping the edge of her dress as he beams at the camera.

The hair is close-cropped in the photo and he's _so young_ , but it's him.

"Lydia? What is it?"

Without looking at her mom, she hands her the photo. "Who's that sitting next to me?" she asks, her tone even.

Her mom takes the picture and frowns when she looks at it. "Oh, yes, the Sheriff's son."

 _Stilinski – Stiles._

Except _not_ Stiles, because her mom calls him by a different name, one that would've gotten him made fun of for years if he hadn't been "kidnapped" and "never seen again."

"That poor man – losing his wife and his son in the same year," her mom said, shaking her head in sympathy. 

"I don't remember him," Lydia says, taking the picture again.

"I'm almost glad you don't – he adored you, you know. Followed you around, made you drawings. I think I may have one or two hidden up here somewhere…"

She pretends to place the photo in the box, but slips it inside her dress pocket.

**

That night, she shoves the photograph – sealed in a plastic bag – in Stiles' face. "You were _human_ once and you didn't think to _tell me_?"

He takes the photo and there's a naked look of _yearning_ on his face that makes her feel like a bitch. "I don't remember being human," he admits softly. "But I was. My dad says I was fussy – like, I kicked around and flailed as a baby. Apparently I never let my mom sleep during the third trimester." He swallows and hands the photo back to her.

"We were in the same class. You used to _follow me around_ , according to my mom," she says, glancing at the photo again.

"That I can believe since clearly I haven't changed much," he responds, giving her a half smile and a self-deprecating shrug. "My dad tells me about _fixations_ and I tend to zone out."

She asks about his dad – Sheriff Stilinski of Beacon Hills Police Department – and how often he sees Stiles.

"Almost everyday, barring weather and work," Stiles answers, smiling. "He's been so amazing. I can't imagine a better dad – I mean, can you think of anyone who could handle their only kid being turned into a merman by a witch, but."

Her eyes widen and she's about to ask if he meant a _literal_ witch, but he suddenly grins at a school of fish swimming in front of him and he ducks his head underwater for a solid three minutes.

**

Sheriff Stilinski lives inland in a small house that's a few minute walk away from the station. She drives over there under the pretext that she's going to the library to do extra credit work in her AP Physics class.

Thankfully, his cruiser and his civilian car are in the driveway and she knocks on the door, gripping her purse tightly.

Sheriff Stilinski opens the door and blinks in surprise. "Lydia," he says, confused.

She swallows, wondering if he remembers her from preschool or if Stiles has told him about her already. "May I come in?" she asks, glancing around the empty neighborhood.

He pales and she tries to give him a comforting smile, which seems to work because he steps to the side and gestures for her to come in. Once she's inside, he shuts the door behind her and she says, "I know about Stiles," looking at him directly in the eye. 

He exhales through his nose, face grim. "Please have a seat," he says, leading her to the living room. "Would you like anything to drink? I was just making coffee."

They sit across from each other with mugs of coffee in their hands and he tells the story of a mermaid being the sole survivor of a massacre and begging a witch to turn her into a human, so she wouldn't be alone. The witch gave her a pair of legs under the condition that her first daughter would belong to the sea.

"We were so careful, but," he shrugs his shoulders. "It wasn't enough. For the first few weeks, she was terrified, but then we found out we were having a boy and it was like we could _breathe_ again."

But then she got sick – cancer – and once she died, the witch came to collect, not caring that they had a son.

"I shot her," he says, pointing to his forehead. "Right between the eyes. And she died, but I don't know if she cast a spell with her dying breath, or what, but Stiles started to change and I had to leave him –"

He stops talking and looks away. She swallows down the painful knot in her throat.

"He saved my life," she tells him quietly.

"I know. He was terrified that you found out what he is. Thank you for not saying anything." He shudders, no doubt thinking about what would happen if the wrong people found out about Stiles.

"He saved me before that," she says. "When I was nine."

"Stiles never told me."

"Probably because it would've been admitting he was dangerously close to the shore of a public beach."

He grins. "Yeah, that would've pissed me off. Scared me more, but." He looks at her. "I probably shouldn't be surprised. He's always been fond of you."

She hates how she flushes in response.

She leaves his house and they exchange numbers. "Are you seeing him tonight?" he asks her.

"Most likely. Why? Do you want me to pass on something to him?"

"No, no, I'm just…happy he has someone other than me. He doesn't like to worry me, but I know he gets lonely."

She doesn't tell him that talking with Stiles makes her a little less lonely too.

**

"What happens when you're out of the water?" she asks Stiles later that night.

He wordlessly lifts himself onto the rock next to her, bringing his fin up to his chin like they were legs. She reaches out to touch, but she curls her hands into fists by her sides to curb the temptation.

The scales shimmer in the moonlight for a minute, water drops rolling off his body and onto the rock, and then slowly, she starts to see patches on his tail that are dry and flaky and even the skin on his top half – on his torso and on his arms, start to turn bone dry.

"Okay, okay, I get it," she says, pushing him off the rock and back into the water.

He stays under for a few long seconds before coming up, combing his hair back out of his face. "It hurts," he says, "It feels like I'm shriveling up like a prune and I'll catch on fire. I assume that's kind of what a vampire would feel like, if they actually existed. I'm pretty sure they don't exist, although if mer-people could exist and witches could exist, then who knows, maybe I'm being terribly narrow-minded."

She doesn't promise him that she's going to find a way to change him back – there _has_ to be one if there's a way to turn humans into _mermaids_ – but she fortifies the decision in her mind.

She's Lydia Goddamn Martin and what she wants, she gets, and if she wants Stiles to become human again, then that's exactly what's going to happen.

**

It's natural – especially in her culture and her generation, growing up with Disney films like, most importantly to her argument, _The Little Mermaid_ – for her to first guess that _true love's kiss_ will break the curse.

She's far from stupid: she knows he loves her. And maybe it wasn't based on much – how much could he learn from watching her from afar in the ocean? – but it doesn't make it less real, and that the warmth and awe in his eyes doesn't seem to fade the more he learns about her.

What she doesn't know is if kissing him will work if she doesn't feel the same way. It's not as if she doesn't like him – she does, even though his ramblings drive her crazy and the way he drifts in and out of conversations can be incredibly frustrating. 

But like in mathematics, sometimes you have to approach the problem at a few different angles before you find the right one. She has a good instinct with math, so if she thinks of this as a mathematical equation, she'll succeed.

"Kiss me," she says once he swims up to her.

"What?" he splutters.

"You love me, right?" she asks, trying to sound scientific and unemotional, but the question still comes out a little hesitant, like she doesn't quite believe that love can be so easily _earned_ , if that's even the word for it.

He nods once, "Yeah," he admits, barely audible over the water.

She gestures for him to come closer and she leans in, heart pounding in her chest and maybe her breathing is shallow as he looks down at her mouth.

His lips barely brush hers when she hears, "Lydia, what the _fuck_?"

She pulls back and whips her head and sees Jackson standing up to his knees in the water, a bottle of vodka hanging from his loose hand.

Stiles flails backward and he can't control his limbs, his tail coming into view and she watches with horror as Jackson's eyes flicker from her to Stiles and back again.

"What the -?" he starts, making his way toward them.

To her surprise, Stiles _hisses_ at Jackson, his human teeth sharpening in the blink of an eye. It stops Jackson in his tracks and Lydia yells at Stiles to leave, careful to not use his name because Jackson may not be as brilliant as her, but he's far from stupid.

Stiles disappears into the dark waters and Lydia rushes over to Jackson to keep him back, to prevent him from going after him. He grips her wrists tight enough that she'll have bruises in the morning.

"What the _fuck_?" he demands, confused and scared and angry, alcohol making his breath reek.

She forces him back in the house and luckily enough, he passes out in the guest bedroom. She leaves him a glass of water and aspirin out of habit and goes outside to grab the bottle, half of its contents staining the sand.

She stares out at the water, even though she knows Stiles is long gone.

**

Jackson wakes up with a hangover and no memory of what happened.

"Did I do that?" Jackson asks, nodding at the bruises on her wrists.

"Yes, you did," she answers, handing him a plate of toast with strawberry jam.

He winces. "Sorry, babe."

She stares at him as he starts eating his toast for a minute before saying, "I want us to break up."

He stops chewing and looks up at her, deeming her to be serious, and he shrugs his shoulders. "Whatever."

She knows him better than most people and she knows it's more than _whatever_ to him, and it is to her too. She still cries when he leaves after he's finished his toast and it takes her an hour to collect herself to go to Sheriff Stilinski in person to let him know what happened the night before.

Except once she finishes, tears start rolling down her cheeks for a different reason all together as she says, "I'm so sorry, I never intended to endanger him like that. We can find him, right? You must have some designated meeting place if something like this happened, and if you don't, I've done a lot of research about aquatic life in terms of communication and –"

She cuts herself off and Sheriff Stilinski gives her a small smile. "He's rubbing off on you." He awkwardly brings a hand to rest on her shoulder. "We have three, except my boat can only do a trip to one and back. I told him to stick to a spot for three days to give me time to figure it out, but…"

"Let's go."

He stares at her, surprised by her initiative and she gives him a look before leading the way out of the house.

**

At the first place, they wait for an hour before Sheriff Stilinski sighs dejectedly, writing a message on a brick for Stiles, dropping it into the water.

As Sheriff Stilinski drives the boat back to shore, she looks back, half expecting Stiles to break the surface.

**

Lydia tries to go through school like normal, despite people whispering behind her back about Jackson and her breaking up over the weekend, despite getting the urge every hour to walk out and drive to the marina.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket during lunch and she gets a text from Sheriff Stilinski, a negative response.

"Are you okay?" Allison asks, eyes full of concern.

"Yes, fine. Absolutely," Lydia says, pocketing her phone and forcing herself to finish eating her lunch.

Allison still glances over at her for the rest of the day and Lydia tells her, "I'll tell you when everything is…settled."

Allison nods. "Okay. I don't doubt you can handle it."

Lydia smiles. "Especially when I'm wearing these killer heels."

**

She still waits for him at night, even though she _knows_ he'd never come back here, she's usually logical, so why is she doing it just for the _iota_ of a possibility that he would come back?

**

The third day, Sheriff Stilinski calls her.

" _He's not here. I don't know if he's changing places every day, or if he's going further out for a while and then coming back, but, we'll just have to be patient_."

Her words stick in her throat – she doesn't _do_ patience, _how_ can he be so calm about this, _where the hell is he_ – and she says, "What if I could get you a better boat."

**

In a normal situation, it would be in poor taste to ask your ex-boyfriend's best friend for a favor, but since this isn't normal and Lydia is who she is, she goes right over to Danny at his locker and asks him for a favor.

"Yeah, sure, what?"

"Could I borrow your family's boat for a day? Possibly two?"

He raises an eyebrow at her. "If this is for some guy, I have a moral obligation as Jackson's best friend to decline."

She rolls her eyes. "Please. So, can I?"

"You have no idea how to work it."

"No, but you do."

"So you're asking to borrow my family's boat _and_ me for a day, possibly two," he clarifies.

"I thought you came automatically with the boat, sorry to be unclear."

He narrows his eyes. "What for?"

She swallows and says, "That's another thing – you're going to have to promise you won't tell anyone about this, including and especially Jackson."

He puts his books into his locker. "I should say no, but you seem pretty serious about this, so. Alright. What days were you thinking?"

**

"The Sheriff? What exactly are you involved in, Lydia?" Danny mutters to her before greeting Sheriff Stilinski with a friendly smile. "Good afternoon, Sheriff."

Sheriff Stilinski nods. "Danny. Thank you for letting us use your boat, I can pay –"

"There's no need, really. Lydia is one of my best friends and it can't hurt being a helpful town citizen."

He doesn't seem to buy it too much, but he reaches into his pocket and hands over Danny's fake ID that was confiscated at the local gay club two weeks ago. Danny grins and pockets it.

"Where do you need to go?" Danny asks, untying the boat from the dock. 

Sheriff Stilinski takes out a folded map from his pocket and hands it to Danny, who raises an eyebrow at the random red circles in the middle of the water.

"Okay…let's…go then."

**

They anchor at the first spot. Danny pulls out his homework and Sheriff Stilinski and Lydia keep an eye out on the water. Every time there's a wave, she perks up, or when she sees a fish swim in the corner of her eye.

She's about to look over Danny's shoulder to see what mistakes he's made (he may be smart, but she's smarter), when Danny says, "Oh, cool, a killer whale! What's he doing on his own, though," smiling at the killer whale that seems to be swimming towards them.

Lydia stands up and walks toward the other side of the boat, narrowing her eyes. "How bizarre is it that a killer whale is…slowing down to a stop next to us…" she trails off, staring at the whale, which looks like it's _nodding_. "No…" she whispers, gripping the boat tightly. "Scott?" she says hesitantly and the whale goes _wild_ , screeching and flapping his fins against the surface of the water.

"Oh my God," Sheriff Stilinski mutters, walking over to Lydia's side. 

Scott starts swimming away, further away from the shore and then stops, turns back and starts screeching again.

"He wants us to follow him," Lydia says in a hushed voice.

To his credit, Danny only raises an eyebrow once at her before bringing up the anchor and following Scott.

**

Stiles arrives not even five minutes after coming to a stop. He's hesitant, only visible up to his eyes above the water.

"Stiles," Sheriff Stilinski sighs in relief and he looks ready to jump into the water to be at eye level with him.

Stiles' entire head raises and he gives his dad a smile. His eyes move over to Lydia and the smile falls a little.

She swallows, remembering sharp teeth and an almost-kiss. "I'm sorry about the other night," she says, proud that her voice doesn't waver once. "Jackson was too drunk to remember. He's not a problem anymore."

Stiles cocks his head to the side and is about to respond when Sheriff Stilinski clears his throat and nods towards Scott. "What a…creative method to get us here."

"Well, what's the point of being a merman if I can't do some Disney-esque things?" Stiles says, petting Scott's head. He shoots Lydia a proper smile and she can breathe a little easier.

"Holy shit," Danny blurts, eyes wide. "My grandparents _weren't_ being senile when they talked about _mermaids_."

Stiles scoffs, puffing out his chest. "Mer _man_." Then he seems to realize he's talking with a complete stranger and he falls back into the water, his mouth hidden from view.

"Stiles, this is Danny Mahealani – he's one of my best friends. Danny, this is Stiles," Lydia says, an eye on Sheriff Stilinski, who seems to be happy, probably at the aspect that Stiles is making friends.

"Danny!" Stiles exclaims happily, as if –

"Oh my God, you totally stalked him like you did me," Lydia says, raising a judgmental eyebrow at him.

Stiles flushes and says, "I _noticed_ him a few times – he's nice!" Then he adds, "You're nice," to Danny, who seems confused and maybe a little worried, which is the intelligent response.

"Uh, thanks."

"Okay, Dad, there's a reason why I wasn't at any of the spots – I was talking with Scott's family and getting them to spread messages to other killer whale families," Stiles says and goes into detail about a call for other mermaids, if they exist, and like a game of telephone, killer whales were passing the message across the Pacific.

There are some along the coast of Japan.

"They're actually coming _here_ ," Stiles finishes eagerly. "It probably won't be for a few days, maybe, I don't know how long ago they left – fish communication gets a little _fishy_ – ha, ha, get it – so, we'll see!"

Sheriff Stilinski puts on a front, but Lydia can tell he's worried.

She doesn't blame him – she is too.

"Uh, guys, sorry to do this, but I need to get the boat back to shore before the sun sets. My parents get worried," Danny says with an apologetic wince.

"Can you just give me a minute?" she asks in a low voice.

He looks at her for a few seconds before nodding. "A minute."

She nods in thanks and goes down closer to the bow, sitting on the edge and swinging her legs over, feet touching the first metal bar. "Avert your eyes, Stilinski," she warns him.

Stiles' cheeks turn a ruddy shade of pink and he obediently turns around, revealing how red the back of his neck is. She smiles as she goes down the bars until the hem of her dress is skimming the water. "Okay, turn around and come closer."

Stiles glances up at the boat where his dad and Danny are no doubt standing and staring, but she keeps his eyes on Stiles, deciding not to care and dealing with the awkwardness on the ride back.

She's still a few inches higher than him and he has to look up, brown eyes wide and light like amber.

She tightens her grip on the metal bar with one hand uses her other to cup Stiles' chin, kissing him gently for a few moments before kissing his forehead, pushing his hair out of his face. "Be safe, or I'll kill you myself."

He laughs soundlessly, looking down and nodding.

(They freeze for a moment, expecting a flash of light indicating that true love's kiss really is the solution, but nothing happens.)

"Well, at least you'll be able to breathe underwater temporarily," he says and she grins.

**

They come four days later.

Lydia and Sheriff Stilinski take his boat out to his usual meeting spot with Stiles to find him chatting away to eight mermaids, one more beautiful than the next.

"Dad! Lydia! Perfect timing," Stiles exclaims, bobbing up and down in excitement. "This is…Akemi, Fumiko, Reiko, Natsumi, Kaoru…" he trails off, looking embarrassed.

"Kayo, Sakura, and I'm Yukiko," the mermaid directly in front of Stiles finishes for him in a notable accent, undoubtedly the leader of the group.

She's curious as to how they seem to know English, especially since they wouldn't be running into foreigners, but judging from the way the seven mermaids behind Yukiko are staring at her and Sheriff Stilinski, watching their every move, makes her hold her tongue.

(She's read enough lore on mermaids to write a damn book about it and after seeing Stiles that night with Jackson, she's more than sure there's a dark side to mermaids and these ones from Japan definitely embrace it.)

"We would prefer if you humans were at eye level," Yukiko says. 

The excited smile on Stiles' face fades. "Hey, that's not very considerate – they tire a lot more easily than we do –"

"Let me make this clear to you… _Stiles_ …we came here of our volition since we had heard the mer-people in this area were extinguished by a sea witch. We are not _your guests_ and you do not have the force to fight us, so. Tell your humans to exit their boat."

Stiles looks as if he's going to fight it, but Lydia says, "I'll do it. But please allow him to remain in the boat – he's old." She shoots Sheriff Stilinski a glare to keep him quiet.

Yukiko nods and Lydia exhales through her nose, slipping off her shoes and her jacket. She stands up and grips her dress close to her body before jumping out and landing in the water.

She gasps at how frigid the water is and she's embarrassed by how grateful she is when she feels a strong arm around her waist, keeping her head above the water because her lungs have frozen.

She brings an arm around his shoulders, shivering against him. Her legs brush against his tail and she forces herself not to flinch.

Stiles is now glaring at the mermaids, hand tightening around her waist and she uses her free hand to pinch his side under the water, giving him a pointed look. He sighs, pursing his mouth for a few seconds. 

Lydia takes the opportunity to say, "So, since you seem so knowledgeable about what happened here, perhaps you can enlighten us on how Stiles can be changed back. He was born human, and if there's a way to turn a human into a mermaid –"

"Merman," Stiles mutters.

She rolls her eyes and continues, "Then there must be a way to turn a mermaid into a human."

"Mer –"

"I take it you haven't lost your _maidenhood_ , so I think mermaid is still appropriate," she hisses.

Yukiko smiles, something dark and evil as she answers, "Yes. There is. Although I'm afraid it requires the heart of someone you hold dear."

There's a tense silence that lasts for a few seconds.

"Of course it's the _dark_ version of _The Little Mermaid_ ," Lydia says, shivering, because she gets it at once; it's been toying at the edges of her mind for a while now.

Stiles, bless him, seems confused. "I don't understand. Do you mean – literally taking the heart out of someone's chest? Seriously? That's a real thing?" He looks at Yukiko like she's insane. "I'm not _doing_ that. I'm not a killer – what's the point in being human if…my dad and Lydia both aren't there with me? I'd," he swallows and she tries to hold him a little tighter. "I'd rather stay like this for he rest of my life, so. You can take that and smoke it."

She sighs, shaking her head. Sheriff Stilinski is slapping a palm to his forehead, but she can see tears in his eyes.

Yukiko then smiles, something softer and kinder. " _Yoku dekimashita_ ," she says to him.

There's a splash behind them and Stiles manhandles Lydia so she's behind him, and it might've been sweet in the romanticism of it except he makes an undignified noise and she falls backwards into the water.

She sputters and smacks Stiles in the back in retaliation before taking in the woman in front of them. She had long black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin, clearly not part of the Japanese mermaid pack.

"Hello, Stiles. I'm Marin."

Stiles smiles hesitantly. "Hey there."

Marin smiles and looks to Lydia. "Why don't you and Mr. Stilinski head back home. Stiles and I are going to go for a swim."

Lydia narrows her eyes before craning her head to look at Sheriff Stilinski, who's staring at Marin like he's trying to read her, but she still has a pleasant smile on her face, not giving away anything.

"I'll be fine, Dad," Stiles says, nodding. "I'm stronger than I look." He turns his head to look at Lydia, forehead brushing against hers briefly. "Will you be out tonight?"

She swallows, nodding. "Yeah, it may be later. I have an AP Calc test to study for."

He and Sheriff Stilinski help Lydia get back inside the boat. "See you later, Lydia!"

Lydia is shivering so hard that she can't say a word, her teeth chattering as she nods once.

**

She doesn't see him later.

**

Her calls to Sheriff Stilinski ring and ring before going to voicemail.

**

She considers driving over to the Stilinski house in a frenzied decision made on severe lack of sleep, but Danny texting her to turn on the local news station _right now_ stops her in her tracks.

Apparently, miraculously even, Sheriff Stilinski's missing son has finally been found.

There's talk about Stiles being discovered wandering around the town beach, shivering and naked by a late night jogger and there's a shot of Sheriff Stilinski, beside himself with joy and it's easy to believe he hasn't seen his son in fourteen years. 

She stands up to leave when her mom comes into the kitchen and says, "You're not going to school like that, right?"

**

All everyone can talk about is Stiles, which is understandable given that he's their age, although she can do without the speculation on how much of a fuck up he'll be.

"I doubt he'll even _do_ senior year or whatever year he'd do of school," Danny says with a long-suffering sigh. "He'll probably just get his GED and go to school far, far away in hopes of not being recognized."

"He's probably, like, feral or something. Like that chick who was strapped to a toilet for her entire life," Jackson adds, biting into an apple.

Lydia gets up from the table and says, " _Genie_ ," before leaving the cafeteria, feeling sick to her stomach.

**

At one in the morning, Sheriff Stilinski calls Lydia: " _If you can sneak out, now would be a good time_."

She parks behind his house and knocks on the back door, holding her breath.

Sheriff Stilinski looks exhausted, but happy. "Come in, come in. I'm so sorry about not getting back to you," he starts, explaining how he was just as surprised when he got a call from the station at midnight about Stiles being found.

"It's been…" he shakes his head.

There's the sound of rushed footsteps above them and she guesses, "Stiles?"

"All day, all night," he sighs. "Stiles! You have a visitor!" he calls before going up the stairs. "I'm going to pass out, goodnight, Lydia."

There's a loud set of stomping after Sheriff Stilinski disappears and she smiles when Stiles comes stumbling into view.

"Lydia!" he exclaims, out of breath with beads of sweat on his forehead as he goes down the rest of the stairs. She looks down and admires his legs – long and lean and she's delirious due to lack of sleep to consider them perfect. "I've been running around the house all day – I just can't believe it! I have _legs_ ," he grips his thighs, "and an _ass_ ," he pats his ass, "and a _penis_ ," and he grabs his crotch, "Which is actually the greatest thing _ever_ , like, I'm surprised anyone can get anything done when you can just –"

She shuts him up by getting on her toes, bringing a hand to the back of his neck and pulling him down for a kiss, mouth open and giving him back the air he gave her while his tongue moves against hers, hot hands on her waist and there are so many issues with this that she's considered over the past twenty-four hours –

He pulls back a little, nose grazing. "I can practically _hear_ you thinking and, while I love your brain, like, consider it an Eighth Wonder of the World, I think a celebration make-out without deep thoughts is in order."

"Normally, I'd smack a person for that, but given the situation, I'll let it go. You're just lucky your mouth is good for something other than rambling."

Stiles grins and is a second away from fist-pumping before she kisses him again, placing her hands on top of his to keep them where they are. He's still smiling against her mouth and it's cute, making the corner of her mouth quirk up as she slips her hands into the front belt loops of too big jeans, keeping him close.

"You know, Danny can come visit if he wants," Stiles says and she laughs, her head falling into his collarbone.

"Of course it was all a ploy to get to Danny," she giggles, "Not that I can blame you, he's gorgeous and I'm pretty sure half the straight guys in the town love him anyway –"

He huffs and wraps his arms around her. "Nah, it's just you," he murmurs.

She swallows and takes a breath, leaving a kiss in the hollow of his throat before moving her hands to slip into his back pockets, squeezing. "Not bad, Stilinski."

He laughs this time, loud and bright and this is becoming a lot more equal in terms of emotional involvement than she's willing to let on, but judging from the way he's quieted and she can feel him smiling into her temple, he's probably figured that out.

(As he damn well should, because she doesn't pick morons.)


End file.
